Less Than Wholesome Hobbies
by Farthingale
Summary: A tale of the obsessions of Gotham's infamous sons and daughters...
1. Chapter 1: Cell I

No, he didn't want her dead _all _the time. Sometimes it was even as though he liked her. Occasionally he could have been persuaded that they belonged together. Once or twice the thought occurred to him that he might have glancingly loved her from time to time. But to expect him to form a coherent opinion on the subject was really far beyond tall order! That was "How do you solve a problem like Maria?" territory! Batsy knew that. Why couldn't the rest of these morons read the cue card that was being held up before their earnest little faces?

"When you try to kill Harley, what does she represent to you?"

_Oy vey. _"Look, Dr Top-Of-Your-Class-In-Medschool, I'd _love _to be the loony that sets you up for life, but you're making me miss my soap and I really must dash…"

Belying that statement, the Joker stayed firmly put; he had little choice in the matter, being not only strait-jacketed but belted into his chair while the young up-and-comer rattled through the neat questions on his university stationery, questions that were soul-destroyingly similar to batteries of others the Clown Prince had heard over the years.

Perhaps stirred by the possibility of the financial windfall referenced to him, the Doctor cleared his throat and tried again.

"What is it that you feel you need to destroy? Does she remind you of your conscience?"

At this, the Joker tipped his head back, so fast that a less experienced maniac would have incurred injury, and laughed so that the fabric of space around the young professional seemed to be slashed into strips, like a flimsy garment.

Tears sprang into the man's eyes, from a mixture of shock and terror; the tapes had not prepared him for _this_. He saw Death, Death white and grinning, standing over his maimed body, and because their gravity insisted, he met the Joker's eyes as his chin descended once more. Those eyes were teary too, but with hopeless glee. Glee that had very little indeed to do with sunny days and puppies. Glee that didn't need rationality. Glee that thought nothing of even the most advanced restraints, according to Arkham lore.

And because he was a trained professional who had studied countless homicides with a straight face and spoken to many alleged socio- and psychopaths with a level voice, his mind secure in itself and quavering for no man, he first underlined his last note meticulously, replaced the pen and pad in his coat pocket and said a civil Good Afternoon before getting his unbroken limbs and unbled arteries out the door of the consultation room, with a decisiveness the like of which he had never felt before and would never feel again.


	2. Chapter 1: Cell II

The guard's eyes flickered in annoyance as a cry of deep feminine anger – the third in five minutes – burst forth from the cell to her left. It sounded as though Inmate 6512 was about to start up again.

"You'd better let me see 'im, you rats in sheep's clothin', or there'll be _consequences_!" There was a thud on the door as the cell's occupant raised her leg and punctuated her frustration with the underside of her bare foot. "You can't _keep _me here away from him! He _needs _me!" The voice had turned tearful now, imploring. "If he's alone… he might get into _trouble _without me!"

The guard deigned to speak then, her shoulders not leaving the wall as she turned slightly more towards the source of the voice. "Don't be a fool, Quinzel. That boyfriend of yours needs you like I need a new pair of ballet slippers."

Now she was petulant. "He _does _need me! He's just… proud!"

The guard chuckled. "Lord, you're worse'n my _sister_. That guy's no good for you, woman! He's the most dangerous psycho this place has ever had the _privilege _of _housing_. Next to him, Jack the Ripper looks like Granny Smith!"

Out from the bars of the tiny window, a hand darted suddenly, miscalculating so that the guard was a good foot too far away to be concerned by it. "Don't you talk about my Puddin' like that! If _he _was here, he'd—"

"Exactly my point. Now pipe down. You're upsetting the natives." The guard leant over and banged the bars with the butt her of stungun, as though putting a period to the conversation.

"_No, I ain't_…" the voice muttered, trailing off as the feet shuffled back to their bunk. "_Just wait 'til he comes for me, then you'll be sorry…_"


	3. Chapter 1: Cell III

Pamela Isley was not upset by the noise. No more so than usual when in the presence of these _non-autotrophic drains on the environment_, anyway. And besides, she shared Harley's frustration, if not her reasons. Arkham was too dark, too cold. The sun lay on her, curled up on the stone floor, for only the briefest time, a feebly lit rectangle that faded quickly with the coming of noon. She was growing weaker by the day (or, more precisely, by the _night_). Soon she would not be able to drag herself from her cell, even if, by some miracle, she gained her freedom. Already the colder weather had reduced her to using a slim metal walking stick, generously provided by an orderly whose eyes had been unashamedly on her for some time. She entertained churlish fantasies of seducing him, in the slim hope that he might provide a passage to Daylight.

Arkham's doctors were transparently perplexed. They had at first suspected Isley of starving herself, but after monitoring closely her limping journey to the mess hall and back, as well as a total absence of self-induced purging behaviour, they had to abandon that theory. They then speculated upon some kind of wasting illness, but their string of tests could not penetrate the anti-logic of her chlorophyll-producing haemoglobin. They resolved the situation by assigning her malady to a psychosomatic condition, a kind of cabin fever for the talking hot-house plant.

_To hell with them._ Let them puzzle over her death, over the mound of compost she felt certain she would become. _Except _–– a stab of guilt hit her gut, right where the largest part of her animal side remained –– _Harley. _Could she accept death and leave her friend to fend for herself? Her poor, delusional friend, doomed by her own obsession to return again and again to a psychopath who would sooner slay her than lay her? Poor, stupid Harley. Isley still held faint hopes of a feminist epiphany for the erstwhile Dr Quinzel. Could she really go away and leave it all in the hands of Fate? Fate had not exactly been coddling either of them in recent memory. Damn it.

Pulling herself up to the sunless window-ledge, Isley sought amongst the Victorian stones for some miniscule signs of life. _There. _In a crumbling corner, nestled in the dank crook, grew a spot of deep green moss. She stroked it with the barest glance of her little finger, whispered to it, encouraged it. After twenty minutes, her joints aching, she slipped away from the window, crawled into her bunk and wrapped herself in the rough government blanket. They were now friends, she and the moss. They understood each other. They would make new plans, together.


	4. Chapter 1: Cell IV

Jeremiah was not a happy man. It often occurred to him that a good person _ought _to be happy, and that caused him to ruthlessly question his own goodness. Could a weak man be good? "The meek shall inherit the Earth" a voice told him, in incorruptible, solemn tones. But then, what sort of Earth was this that wept at the seams with such depravity? Was this an Earth for a soft, uncertain man to inherit? He frequently allowed his mind to synecdochize the asylum into the entire world, and to see his own place in it as so terrifyingly precarious that the eventuality of slipping off into the screaming pit of Unstables seemed impossible to disown.

Yes, he suffered from melodrama; it was a family affliction. He wished he had the stomach to drink through it, as had his father, but a persistent ulcer denied him even that bitter reprieve from his reality. The Asylum itself, brooding and Gothic, usually seemed far more in command than he. _It _understood the whims of its residents. _It _knew the terms with which they conversed, the rules by which they lived. Smug and bloated, like a black toad, it refused to tell Jeremiah any of it.

Pulling open a desk drawer that stuck halfway open, the current head of the Arkham family retrieved a slim, stiff volume with archaic gold lettering on the jacket. He lingered for a moment on the nightmarish woodcut printed before the title page, the creature whose face split in a grin, its ancient eyes wide and its tongue lolling from a mouth that was never meant to smile. Then he swallowed, clearing the congestion in his throat. He always read aloud to himself. He liked the sound of his voice. It was the only thing about himself that he liked.

"_Once upon a time there was a girl called Red Riding Hood, so-named for the blood-hued hooded cape which she wore over her auburn locks…_"


	5. Chapter 2: Cell V: The SetUp

Fifteen minutes had passed since Lights Out. The moon was virtually full and shone through the high little cell window, falling eerily on the Joker's broad white forehead. The skin there creased, throwing tiny shadows, as his facial expression communed with his thoughts. Etiolated crow's feet at his eyes grew and shrank. Laugh lines stretched and relaxed, then stretched again. The hollows of his cheeks vanished, reappeared, vanished. Yet all with some acrobatic symmetry.

His mind was moving too fast for his face to follow, and so each expression had a time delay of nanoseconds, being slightly out of date the moment it appeared. His eyes darted like budgerigars in twin cages, never perching for more than an instant.

Until finally, the facial foxtrot slowed to a halt. Garish lips drew back from gums, further than a man's lips _should_. He bared his teeth in manic glee, and lunar albedo reflected back at distant satellites. From behind this calcium curtain, little gasps of air became quiet giggles.

The Joker had a plan.

Purposefully losing his footing, he tipped over and fell with an effective expulsion of air. He cried out, in pain and annoyance.

"Guard!_ Guard!_"

After a delay of moments, a face appeared nervously at the view-panel in the armoured door. "Y-yes?" The guard was new. He had heard so many stories that his legs had started to tremble.

Joker raised his upper body, his arms stiff and his narrow shoulders drawn back. He left his legs as they had landed. "Good _God, _Guard! I think I've busted it! The old peg-leg's gone out! I'm a _tree _swaying in the breeze and I fear none may picnic in my shade again!" He rolled his eyes dolefully, his crimson lips pulled down at the sides.

"Uh… excuse me?"

"My _leg_, you idiot! Stop lollygagging and _help _me!"

The guard was terrified. But not a single synapse suggested that he should obey the pallid prisoner. And anyway, he didn't have the key for the door. "I'm afraid I'm n-not auth— _thorized_… to do that… S-sir." He didn't know why he was awarding the Joker an honorific title, but it seemed a good thing to do when placating someone powerful. And even though _he _was the one on the other side of a heavily secured door, the guard had the distinct impression that that meant very little.

"Well then," Joker said sweetly, "perhaps you'd better pop off and find someone who _is_, hmmm?" His eyebrows were raised, like arching green caterpillars, and his expression made this suggestion seem very reasonable.

"O-kay… Just hang on…" And the guard was gone, off to find someone who could deactivate the panic button in his head.

Joker reclined fully once more, rested his cheek on a raised hand. The skin displaced by his hand and a growing grin formed furrows around his eye. "I'll do my _best_, Cuddles…"

Dr Charles Sykes didn't need this tonight. The _Joker_. The _perfect _end to a _perfect _shift. Still a psychotic patient was still a patient. Maybe the delusional white rat really _had _injured himself, with all his leaping about. Sure. And maybe Lauren was going to call him back. (She had no reason to be upset, but that's women for you. If she had any idea the sort of people _he _dealt with on a daily basis, _then _she could start making judgement calls. That was her problem. Lovely girl, but short-sighted. Insular.)

He stepped up to the view-pane, spoke through the little circular cutouts.

"What is it this time, Joker?"

From his prone position, all white limbs and attitude, the source of Sykes' present annoyance gave him a reproving frown. "A little _respect_, my good man! That's _Mister Kerr_ to _you_. Or Joseph _Kerr_, _esquire_, if you prefer. I don't go around calling you Charlie-Pooh, now do I? Once we know each other better, I _might _let you call me Joe."

Sykes sighed, but knew that compliance was the route to expedience. "Apologies, Mr Kerr, what seems to be troubling your good self?"

The Joker was immune to his sarcasm. "My Good Self is suffering from a loss of leverage, most specifically of the left limbic variety. I suspect it's taken a sabbatical, which is extremely presumptuous, I must say."

"You say your leg's acting up?"

"No, I said something _much _more inspired than that, but the sentiment is more or less equal."

"I suppose you'll want me to take a look at it?"

"If you _would _be so kind." Sykes gave him a transparently dubious look, to which the Joker reacted by feigning woundedness. "_What_?_ Surely _you're not accusing me of ill intentions, Doc! Why, I'm a model prisoner! Just last Tuesday I helped an old lady cross the street."

Sykes removed his spectacles, cleaned them on a red handkerchief. "She was a policewoman," he said dispassionately. "You kicked her infront of a truck."

"Maybe so, but the thought was there. And besides," his voice dropped a dark octave, "she was trying to clamp my car."


	6. Chapter 2: Cell 2

Harley lay on her bunk, facing the wall. She was admiring her 'Wall of Love', the collage of clippings and snapshots she had amassed of her beloved "Puddin'". She liked to read the long wordy articles about his schemes and escapes, to chuckle over how brilliant he was and how easily he outsmarted the morons who tried to control him. But she also liked the short ones, because they usually came with a space-filling photograph; often his police mug-shot, sometimes a reporter's shot of his being brought in by the _Bat_, but occasionally pictures from his own 'Media Alerts', as he called them, which were a great source of egotistical fun for the Clown Prince.

She ran her fingertips over his smile, humming "Love Is A Many Splendoured Thing" to herself. Through the powers of a professional fantasist, she could feel flesh under her fingers instead of paper. Then she imagined the hard yet slick texture of his teeth. She ran her tongue over her own teeth behind closed lips. Ever since the Joker, bright shiny toothpaste-commercial teeth looked very strange to her, very dishonest. As a young girl, she had had braces, and even though she brushed thoroughly twice a day during and after the course, they were never quite white again. Something about the glue, perhaps. _Maybe_, said a thought, moseying into her mind and reclining on a couch, _the same stuff in brace-glue was in Mr J's chem-bath… _

She rolled onto her back, shut her eyes, drifted into memory. Or a state that was one part memory, three parts imagination and wishful thinking. A demure breath of satisfaction escaped through her nose. Her visions sustained her. They never let her stop hoping.


	7. Chapter 2: Cell VI: The Delivery

"You're a _peach _of a man, Sykes, you know that? A real _whale _on the barnacle of life!" The Joker smirked as two bulky orderlies lifted his securely-straitjacketed form up onto the examination bed.

"I'll take that whence it comes, Mr Kerr," replied the doctor, impassively.

"Ooh, _touché_! Let the tongue-depressing begin…" He stuck out his tongue, wagged it cheerfully at Sykes for a moment, then waited, open-mouthed, while his rapid eyes scanned the room. A photograph on the desk caught his attention. "Oogh ga guowd, gahk?"

Sykes looked up from the Joker's medical file. "I beg your pardon?" The civility in his voice was wearing thin.

The patient rolled in his tongue and moistened his mouth theatrically before repeating his question. "I _said_: 'Who's the broad, doc?'"

Sykes saw little point in concealing the answer. "That's Lauren. She just graduated _cum laude _from Gotham University."

"Teacher's pet, eh?" the Joker insinuated slyly, his eyes not yet straying from the mousy yet photogenic young woman in the green dress.

"I can't see that that's any of your business, Mister six-oh-three-five-dash-nine-ell. Now, can you feel this?" Sykes touched the Joker's knee with an instrument.

"Nope."

"This?"

"Nope."

"Here?"

"Steee-rike three, yer out."

"Hmm." Sykes picked up a small medical hammer and tapped at the knee. Joker's leg reacted in the expected fashion. "Reflexes normal."

"I'm delighted to hear it. But we're still not on speaking terms."

"The nerves aren't communicating to your brain. Have you had any accidents recently? Anything out of the ordinary?" Sykes almost couldn't believe he was asking that, seeing as what constituted 'ordinary' for the Joker was about as mundane as a trip to Bizarro Disneyland for most people.

"Negatorio. But I've had some odd spells of late. The occasional ride in the inner-ear Tilt-a-Whirl. Golden circle tickets to see Vertigo at the Odeon. That sort of thing." The Joker's face, temporarily ungrinning, was long and sombre. He stared straight at Sykes, coldly measured up his physician. "I assume you know why."

Sykes took off his spectacles, cleaned them on his handkerchief (a momentary slip of the fingers revealing to the Joker's keen eyes that he was uncertain and killing time with the gesture). "I'll need to do some tests. But it's probably nothing more than a trapped nerve and perhaps some hypoglycaemia."

"You know best, doc." The Joker's smile was simpering. "After all, five million inmates can't be wroooough…" With a triple-punctuated impact, the Joker's entire lanky form met with the floor. The orderlies were quick to react, pulling him back up to the bed and laying him on his back, while Sykes, internally flustered, fetched his penlight. Moments later, the Joker's lips drew back in a snarl and he groaned.

"Lie still," commanded Sykes. He lifted the Joker's eyelids, shone his light at each green-ringed pupil, came away nonplussed. "We'll have to unwrap him," he told the orderlies, whose faces showed that they were none-too-happy about this prospect.

"I gotta say, Sykes," the Joker chuckled breathlessly, "I'm losing my faith in your diagnostic skills."


End file.
